"... the true genius of the plan was THE FEAR... FEAR became the ultimate tool of this government." -- V, V for Vendetta
The more things change, the more things stay the same.
Under the Republicans, petty tyrants used 9/11/01 and the threat of "terrorism" -- a real thing that existed but that the government-sponsored fear campaign and its lackeys in the media leaned on far too heavily to grease the skids to justify new, increasing power grabs.
Under the Democrats, for the past year-and-a-half up to today, 09/11/21, and likely into the near future, petty tyrants are using "covid" -- a real thing that exists but that the government-sponsored fear campaign and its lackeys in the media lean on far too heavily to grease the skids to justify new, increasing power grabs.
While not all the details are the same, how unfortunately prescient the movie "V for Vendetta" was... It takes place in 2020, after an infection was made in a lab, leading to a pandemic, that a national political party generated increasing FEAR around in order to win a divisive election, and upon winning continued to lean more heavily into in order to maintain and enhance control over the population, imposing upon the populace a remedy that resulted in record profits for a pharmaceutical company, while still instituting lockdowns and other increasingly draconian policies based on FEAR in the name of "UNITY".
And while we in the US might not be at the level of tyranny as seen in the movie, add in another similar factor of British-sounding accents, curfews, family members being taken from homes, concentration camps, and more -- and Australia is just about there, revisiting its history and ancestry as a continent-sized prison colony.
So maybe it's not as far off as we'd like to believe, considering how rapidly Australians made their transition.
The parallels are a little too close for comfort.
Petty tyrants, at any level of government, whether they claim to be so-called "conservatives" or "liberals" (whatever these terms even mean, anymore) should be allowed nary an inch. It's the same old story that repeats itself. The generation and propagation of FEAR is, has been, and will always be, the greatest tool the government can use to get the people to willingly grant them, due to inflated or even outright false pretenses, increasing and permanent control over their choices, their livelihoods -- and their very lives.
As the slip slopes, the dominoes will continue to fall...
A thousand cuts. The ubiquity of it all numbing us, dumbing us down. They grow increasingly numerous, sharper, and deeper -- all for a virus with up to a 99.99% infection recovery rate, where the vast majority of the infected have a mild to asymptomatic response, where those with sever reactions have an average of four comorbidities, and where the average death age is higher than the average life expectancy.
In spite of this, the narrative of FEAR and impending chaos and looming ubiquitous death must be reinforced, regardless -- note the constantly shifting goal posts and the focus on "cases" as opposed to considering the actual virulence of the infection.
Your "jab" is less and less consequential. Enjoy your forever-jabs!
Covid, now endemic as so many of us always expected it to be, is never going away. If the ongoing narrative regurgitated by the usual suspects in the government, media, and useful idiots in the rank-and-file embeds itself over the long-haul, then these and other power grabs along with the campaign of FEAR continuing into perpetuity is a very real prospect.
The beatings will continue until morale improves
I don't know about everyone else -- but I know what I'm watching, tonight, on this September 11th.
Originally, I wasn't very interested in picking up Far Cry 5, the latest entry in a series of formularized games going back to 2004 -- but the more I read about and saw more of its gameplay a couple of weeks leading up to its release, the more excited about it I became. The Montanan setting was much 'closer to home' than past installments, the cult concept was intriguing, the graphics looked gorgeous, the music highly thematic, and the gunplay sweet. The addition of co-op in its beautiful and chaotic open world of Americana was all just too much to pass up, this time around.
Pre-orders were placed.
First, The Actual Game
Allusions to 'The Last Supper', anyone?
On the politics (or mostly lack-thereof) within Far Cry 5 -- they had absolutely zilch, zero, nada to do with my initial excitement, subsequent purchase and ongoing enjoyment of this game. Far Cry 5 feels like The Dukes of Hazard taking on some equally cartoonish cult, and, ultimately, if I’m playing a Far Cry game, I’m not doing it for deep political commentary, regardless of the setting. I'm doing it to have fun in amazingly rendered open worlds and with the characters that dwell there, with great voice-acting, script, and well-executed facial and other animation mo-cap. I expect solid gameplay and combat with many ways to approach varying, highly dynamic situations within the chaos-engine that smashes, head-first, into what would otherwise be considered a paradise on earth.
At the end of the day, you and your buds are going to be sending flaming mountain lions to ravage a bunch of goonish, cult-obsessed, drug-addled hillbillies. Or maybe you'll take out psychopathic cultists with an M60 machine gun mounted on a flame-painted muscle car. Or maybe you'll whack them upside the head with a barbed-wire, nail-studded bat as you whip by in a pickup truck. Or maybe you'll raid doomsday prepper stashes. Or maybe you'll just enjoy the scenery. Or maybe you and your friend will do some fishing in order to feed your diabetic pet grizzly bear, 'Cheeseburger'. Whatever floats your boat, man (like, literally, you can go fishing on your boat).
Ah, yes. As a 90s kid, I remember the old 'FDA-approved' Food Pyramid plastered all over the walls of the cafeterias of elementary school all the way through high school. Pure carbohydrate foods like bread, pasta, cereal, and rice made up the massive foundation of supposedly healthy eating, whereas fats were, for some odd reason, lumped in with sugar, and should make up the least of your diet. They apparently updated this slightly in 2005, and in 2011, simplified it all even further for our carb-loaded (read: sugar-loaded), nutrient-and-fat deficient brains (our brain is made up of fat) with the dopey MyPlate iteration in 2011.
But it's wrong -- all of it. Unhealthily, mortally wrong. Consuming 'low fat' foods are what is actually making people fat and unhealthy and as it turns out -- literally killing people. The government FDA-approved and propagated 'Food Pyramid' and 'MyPlate' too many of us have been convinced of for so long has been nothing but the result of power politicking in Washington DC.
Remember this nonsense?
The Lancet, a widely known and well-respected medical journal, published a study that has officially and finally blown up the old post-hoc, ergo propter hoc justified narrative of 'consuming fats = bad, therefore, minimize fats (and by implication, replace with carbs)'. Of course, this also ignored the fact that much of our bodies, including our brain, skin, and almost all of our internal organs are made up of fats.
Look no further than the Mount Everest, peak-levels of cringe surrounding this issue in popular media and so-called science fiction and you'll see why this is increasingly becoming something worth addressing and talking about. Yes, it's lamentable that much of this has to be reiterated and more rigorously argued for, but here we are. Sex, gender, pronouns -- it's all being ripped apart and mashed together over social and popular media, with the (so-called) progressive, postmodern, CTRL-Left (the flipside of the collectivist, identitarian coin that also includes the ALT-Right) and their Social Justice Warriors increasingly latching on and doubling down, pushing for individual and institutional thought and speech control. Critical theory is their muse, which in a broad sense claims that all knowledge is historical and biased, that any claims to objective knowledge are illusory, and that it should all be maximally destabilized through various strategies and tactics. In arbitrary, subjectivist ideology, the ends justifies the means, as well -- this means that minimizing, obscuring or concealing any alleged truth up to engaging outright lies is a small price to pay to achieve a greater goal.
This is not to say that everyone who has been convinced of this mode of thought and speech is necessarily an underhanded activist (although it's relatively easy to spot the activist types). However, those who aren't are being tooled into useful idiots in doing so, and it's important to be equipped with the knowledge and integrity to avoid becoming an intellectual casualty of this ideology.
Appreciating where there are some clear, settled, and calm waters of knowledge, understanding, and communication so society can turn its focus to more pressing and important issues, it is the CTRL-Left's modus operandi to come along, dump a bunch of dirt and shit into it all, kick it up, and rub our faces in it. We might ask why they do this -- why this is their M.O. -- but to me, it seems pretty clear. Compared to trying to enact radical, social change in the face of established norms and accepted realities, it's much easier to do it amidst chaos and distraction -- especially if you can trip people up on what they think they know, their ability to understand the world around them, and how they're able to communicate.
This strikes at the heart of why the Orwellian deconstruction of knowledge and language is so effective. In the words of the infamous Lord Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish from Game of Thrones, "Chaos... is a ladder."
Part I: 'Sex' as an Empirical Construct and Exceptions that Prove the Rule
In the human species, sex is binary, permanent, and unchanging. This is readily, empirically observable -- male or female, man or woman, him or her, he or she -- all of these are both defined and conceptualized specifically according to an objective biological ‘sex’, identical across all times and cultures of human history. This isn't even referring to the superficial perceptions of someone's sex based on outward appearance or genitalia, this is in regards to the empirical, objective reality of an individual's DNA as genetically derived -- XX for female or XY for male.
"♪♫ 46 and 2, ahead of me. ♪♫"
When the Social Justice Warrior is confronted with the argument from the empirically observable, genetic reality surrounding sex, he will often want to point out either the development of a fetus as 'female by default' or the less than 0.01% of individuals with more complicated allosomal (referencing the sex chromosomes) profiles.
While easily dispatched, the 'female default' fetal development claim is, unfortunately, far too often one we still hear and have to put up with. The claim is partly that because a penis on an XY fetus doesn't form until about the 9th week, then that means an XY fetus prior to that time is a 'female' with a 'vagina' and 'ovaries', with the alleged implication being that XX or XY chromosomes must then not necessarily be what determine sex, and that sex is more 'biologically fluid' than is being acknowledged. Also, a quick Google search of 'female as default sex' yields quite a bit of content of people continuing to propagate this error based on decades old and very limited research in the field of fetal sex differentiation. The reality is that prior to the 9th week where sexual differentiation actually takes place, there are neither 'female sex organs' nor 'male sex organs' -- merely as-of-yet undeveloped, non-functional 'buds' that will eventually form according to allosomal profiles, ceteris paribus.
Research on sex determination (the differentiation of the embryonic bipotential gonad into a testis or an ovary) traditionally focused on testis development. Andrew Sinclair’s 1990 Nature paper famously identified a Y-chromosome gene as the Sex-Determining Region Y (SRY). Female sexual development, by contrast, was thought to proceed as a "default" in the absence of Sry. In the case of sex determination, "default" became the prevailing concept for female pathways—i.e., an ovary results in the absence of other action. The active processes controlling ovarian development remained a blind spot. The notion of a "passive" female fit with current scientific theories and gender assumptions in the broader society.
Around 2010, questioning the notion of "default" led to the discovery of a cohort of genes required for ovarian function. Gender analysis led to three innovations in this field:
Recognition of ovarian determination as an active process. These investigations have also enhanced knowledge about testis development, and how the ovarian and testicular pathways interact (see chart).
Discovery of ongoing ovarian and testis maintenance. Research into the ovarian pathway revealed that the transcriptional regulator FOXL2 must be expressed in adult ovarian follicles to prevent "transdifferentiation of an adult ovary to a testis." Subsequently, researchers found that the transcription factor DMRT1 is needed to prevent reprogramming of testicular Sertoli cells into ovarian granulosa cells.
New language to describe gonadal differentiation. Researchers have dismissed the concept of "default" and emphasize that, while female and male developmental pathways are divergent, the construction of an ovary (like the construction of a testis or any other organ) is an active process. Each pathway requires complex cascades of gene products in proper dosages and at precise times. [1]
Further, in fewer than 0.00001% of XX and XY fetuses, the sex organs may fail to develop, leading always to infertility and what are called 'streak gonads' (non-functional, usually cancerous, fibrous tissue) as well as a failure of secondary sex characteristics to develop during puberty. This is called gonadal dysgenesis and, depending on the form, can include complications such as deafness, eye disorders, and cancer (at the site of the streak gonads during infancy).
The counter-argument regarding more complicated allosomal profiles is far more interesting and more important. Notable examples include combinations such as XXXXY, XXXY, XXYY, XX/XY Chimerism, XXY (Klinefelter Syndrome), XXX (Triple-X Syndrome), XYY, XX Male (de la Chapelle Syndrome), X (Turner Syndrome), and more. These are all extremely rare, and apart from one or two non-intersex profiles, they're all very unfortunate disorders that have complications ranging from sterility, to deafness, to eye disorders, to deformalities, to cognitive or physical developmental disorders, and in many cases shorter to much shorter lifespans and cancer. Most often, you'll find a combination of these unfortunate complications.
While still extremely rare, other intersex individuals often referenced are those historically known as true hermaphrodites, and more clinically referred to these days as having ovotesticular disorder of sex development. While their external genitalia are often ambiguous and they usually grow up sterile, these individuals typically have far less severe complications than the previously mentioned syndromes and can usually live normal lives.
The 3 Primary Karyotypes for True Hermaphroditism are XX with genetic defects (55-70% of cases), XX/XY (20-30% of cases) & XY (5-15% of cases) with the remainder being a variety of other Chromosomal abnormalities and Mosaicisms.[2]
It's important to bring up true hermaphroditism, since at first glance, this seems to possibly propose a problem for the idea of the empiricism of binary, clear-cut sexes. However, reality still reaffirms this. In the cases where true hermaphroditism isn't expressed through one of the previously mentioned severe syndromes, most are simply cases of the XX/XY chimerism -- being that what was initially to be separate twins actually ended up with one XX or XY twin absorbing the opposite sex twin at a very early stage of development. Where there would have been two clear-cut opposite-sexed individuals -- an extremely rare, developmental fluke took place, instead.
In consideration of all of this, how does it follow, then, that 'more than two sexes actually exist', or that this justifies genetically healthy and normal folks to claim that sex isn't based on one's chromosomes? If over 99.99% of individuals follow the standard genetic profile of sex as 'male' or 'female', and the further an individual unfortunately genetically drifts away from the standard blueprint of a healthy, fully functional individual brings more and increasingly severe complications, then it would actually follow that our conclusion should be the exact opposite. Simply put -- there are two sexes, and the more genetically intersex an individual is, the worse off he or she will be.
Ultimately, the subject of one's sex is a matter of an empirical, binary reality for 99.99% of all individuals born -- male or female. As for the remaining 0.01% of genuinely intersex individuals, it makes sense to refer to them as intersex, but not because there is a 'third sex', or no sexes, or some other arbitrary number of sexes other than 'two', but because there are two sexes. They are the extremely rare exception that proves the rule. If these weren't complications, and additional sexes were necessary or even just possible in the sexual reproduction of the human species, then intersex could be considered an additional 'sex'. Further, it's a particularly strange line of reasoning to fall on the argument of pointing out these intersex individuals and those with genetic complications as some justification for transgendered individuals to be able to claim to be the opposite sex, when they were, in fact, born genetically healthy and normal.
Part II: 'Gender' as a Social Construct and its Relative 'Elasticity'
Gender, on the other hand, is a subjective, social construct, albeit still based on a bimodal distribution of ‘masculinity’ vs ‘femininity’. It's a social construct because while expressions of gender are typically tied closely to the sexes across cultures, the cultures themselves express masculinity and femininity in sometimes wildly different ways. It's a bimodal distribution because while an individual would be on the spectrum of more or less masculine or feminine expression, there would be a peak concentration around a typical degree of masculine expression amongst the general populace, and a separate peak concentration around a typical degree of feminine expression amongst the general populace. In the middle of these peaks you'd have a very, very deep trough with a small connecting point representing essentially the androgynous, alienesque Mechanical Animals (his, ahem, best album, obviously) incarnation of Marilyn Manson, or Ziggy Stardust-esque androgyny.
The go-to talking point for 'progressives', socialists (or do I repeat myself), and SJWs is that Nazism was only nominally socialist for the purposes of the Nazi propaganda machine -- that it was actually a kind of 'capitalism run amok', or 'radical capitalism merged with the State', and that the socialist nomenclature was nothing more than a superficial cover to gain appeal from the masses. While the Nazis and Dr. Joseph Goebbels, notorious as the Minister of Propaganda (and widely recognized as an ardent leftist) were, unfortunately, indeed masters, if not forerunners of modern propaganda -- the reality of Nazi economics reflected much of what their propaganda claimed.
Old Nazi pastimes like institutionalized book burnings, mass-censorship (public and private), and other such forms of information control of anything that wasn't in absolute lock-step with propagating National Socialism, 'German purity' or other such concepts are historically well-favored and effective tools in socialist regimes. Even Nazi extermination camps actually used the Soviet model as a template. Nazi SS Official Rudolf Höss, the architect behind the infamous Auschwitz concentration Camp, found himself inspired:
The Reich Security Head Office issued to the commandants a full collection of reports concerning the Russian concentration camps. These described in great detail the conditions in, and organization of, the Russian camps, as supplied by former prisoners who had managed to escape. Great emphasis was placed on the fact that the Russians, by their massive employment of forced labor, had destroyed whole peoples.[1]
You simply don't find this kind of stuff in capitalist systems. Of course, if you call these out as some examples of the socialist personality of Nazi Germany on social media, you need only wait mere moments before some rando Defender of Socialism rears his or her or xer head to jump on the opportunity to claim that the Nazis and Nazi Germany weren't actually socialist.
Personally, I'm entertained by the bouts of mental gymnastics that these authoritarian 'leftists' engage in when they try to rationalize their cognitive dissonance the first time they hear about Hitler's and the NSDAP's '25-point Plan'. Interestingly enough, most of these 'true believers' in socialism seem unfamiliar with the actual policies and economic systems underlying the Nazi economy.
Note... I have highlighted socialist policies in red, particularly socialist ones in emboldened red, and the most egregious, arbitrary and murderous socialist polices in underlined and emboldened red. The rest range from more general to nationalist to radical nationalist policies. The '25-point Plan' and Platform of the NSDAP
We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the people's right to self-determination.
We demand equality of rights for the German people in respect to the other nations; abrogation of the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.
We demand land and territory (colonies) for the sustenance of our people, and colonization for our surplus population.
Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently, no Jew can be a member of the race.
Whoever has no citizenship is to be able to live in Germany only as a guest, and must be under the authority of legislation for foreigners.
The right to determine matters concerning administration and law belongs only to the citizen. Therefore, we demand that every public office, of any sort whatsoever, whether in the Reich, the county or municipality, be filled only by citizens. We combat the corrupting parliamentary economy, office-holding only according to party inclinations without consideration of character or abilities.
We demand that the State be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the total population of the State, then the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich.
All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.
The first obligation of every citizen must be to productively work mentally or physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all. Consequently, we demand:
Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore, we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.
We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.
The State is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school [Staatsbürgerkunde] as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.
The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.
We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press. In order to enable the provision of a German press, we demand, that:
a. All writers and employees of the newspapers appearing in the German language be members of the race;
b. Non-German newspapers be required to have the express permission of the State to be published. They may not be printed in the German language;
c. Non-Germans are forbidden by law any financial interest in German publications, or any influence on them, and as punishment for violations the closing of such a publication as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-German concerned. Publications which are counter to the general good are to be forbidden. We demand legal prosecution of artistic and literary forms which exert a destructive influence on our national life, and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands.
We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the State so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race. The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: The common good before the individual good. (Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz). Has also been translated as "The good of the State before the good of the individual."
For the execution of all of this we demand the formation of a strong central power in the Reich. Unlimited authority of the central parliament over the whole Reich and its organizations in general. The forming of state and profession chambers for the execution of the laws made by the Reich within the various states of the confederation. The leaders of the Party promise, if necessary by sacrificing their own lives, to support by the execution of the points set forth above without consideration.
It's extraordinarily clear that there is not a single capitalist policy in their platform -- quite the opposite, actually. I count 13 to 15 policies out of the total 25, making more than half of the total platform of the NSDAP anywhere on the spectrum from 'socialist' to "holy shit, that's murderously socialist". Sans the nationalist and racist flavor added in to these policies, avowed socialists and, ironically, 'Antifas' the world over would absolutely cheer at such proposals. They would see such a rising, popular platform as a harbinger of incoming 'Social Justice'.
Netflix describes the show on its main page as, "From the creators of "The Matrix" and "Babylon 5" comes this tense series in which eight people can telepathically experience each other's lives." Oh, is that all it is? Sounds like some great science fiction! I loved The Matrix, it's one of my favorite movies! I've never seen Babylon 5, but I've heard good things and it's rated very highly, even on imdb! So, hrmmm.... I wonder why Sense8 was cancelled?
Oh... so whichever Sense8 character I 'am', I'm the pan-sexual one. Got it.
Well, it probably didn't help that the show insulted the intelligence of its viewership by actually being nothing more than a thinly-veiled SJW, gay and trans propaganda piece -- and this is coming from someone who supports gay marriage and the right for anyone to be gay or trans. It presented itself and was marketed as something it, well, wasn't. The vast majority seemingly wanted sci-fi, not gay/transgender sex scenes, at times with trying-too-hard, 'shocking', ahem... elements, no less. And 'to the extent that it was' what it claimed to be -- that was the thin, albeit highly transparent, insulting, preachy veil.
While each of the characters can be sexually attracted to anyone, they may not find themselves romantically attracted to everyone. Instead, the sensates might identify as being interested in the opposite (heteroromantic) or the same (homoromantic) gender, and even two (biromantic), all (panromantic), or no (aromantic) genders.
Sense8 seems to be going to infinity and beyond in its exploration of how attraction and sex function as part of the human experience. So, why shouldn’t it go one step further? Not only do the sensates create an opportunity to expose general audiences to an often ignored, unexplained, and underrepresented sexual orientation, but they have a serious chance to introduce the public to another aspect of attraction.
It also creates a win-win scenario in terms of the series LGBTQIA representation. We live in a culture that frequently presents us with negative or less than realistic portrayals of gay and lesbian characters. In come Lito Rodriguez (Miguel Ángel Silvestre) and Nomi Marks (Jamie Clayton), two sensates whose personal development is literally as good as—if not better than—their perceivably heterosexual counterparts.
My eyes are rolling into the back of my head.
TTH
Look, there's nothing wrong with having gay or trans characters in your show. It can mix up the characters a bit and possibly insert a necessary dynamic for your story, but don't do it in a way that compromises said story or condescendingly preaches to your viewership, especially if you're already coming from a political fringe, all while claiming that you're something you're not. You've got to be more subtle, more sophisticated than that. Instead, we're treated with little gems like this one, right in the first episode of this 'sci-fi' series...
"Hey, kids, you like science fiction?! Family movie ni--OH MY GOD"
No one I've known would ever consider me a prude, but that was... jarring, considering. Kinda sets a different tone, guys.
No one watching a show for entertainment likes being preached to, apart from overzealous activists who live and want to live in a bubble. Naturally, those are the ones who came out engaging in all sorts of slacktivism about its cancellation -- and likely, these types were pretty much the only ones who stuck with it, why viewership was so abysmal, and why it was cut off at the knees after only the second season. Of course, regardless of all of the protesting, petitioning, tweeting, blogging, and threats of account cancellations and boycotts by SJWs, "Netflix Apologizes to Viewers: 'Sense8' Is Still Canceled". Oh, well, then. It's almost as if Netflix is a for-profit company fueled by revenues from viewership as opposed to being powered by SJW slacktivist screeching! Who woulda thunk it, the folks at Netflix know pretty damned well what they're doing.
'House of Cards' is not at all this kind of #LGBTQIABBQ%+ propaganda, but most certainly has interesting, important gay characters and is a great example of how to do them the right way. Of course, I think the issue is that 'House of Cards' is actually meant to be and works out as an interesting, well-made story. 'The Wachowskis', on the other hand, set out to make little more than a propaganda piece all along, where a sheen made of slivers of an otherwise potentially good sci-fi story gets wasted and marred by being tightly spread over a rotten core of SJW propaganda and just-for-the-sake-of-it-sex.
Sorry, 'The Wachowskis', but it seems The Matrix Trilogy (more emphasis on the first movie) and V for Vendetta signaled the beginning, the height, and from there the very rapid and steep decline into Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending, and now, Sense8.
From the file of 'What the Fuck Did I Just Watch'...
I've been a big fan of the 'Salad Fingers' series for years. It's just... darkly bizarre and there really is nothing quite like it. David Firth typically creates some very dark stuff that's hard to forget and some of it really pushes the limit, or even just cuts right through the limit entirely. Ole Salad Fingers just scratches the surface of his others works that do a damned good job of making you feel like you've lost a piece of your soul after watching them -- pieces you may never get back. Of course, why would anyone watch stuff like this? Us millenials love it, for some reason -- we gobble it right up. A lot of us tend to be drawn, in a way, to some really dark, shocking, and nihilistic themes. In humor, even, the darker the better.
This is something entirely different, though. Firth is not merely expressing himself through another dark, depressing, scary, brutal, existentialist nightmare of an attack on our delicate (read: sane) sensibilities. The animation and ambience is, as expected, 'classic Firth' -- not that I think Mr. Firth is capable of making anything that looks or sounds remotely 'normal', in the first place -- but don't let the general creepiness turn you off from watching it. It hits on all cylinders with regards to the point he's trying to convey and the themes and concepts he's alluding to.
In proper ad absurdum fashion, even if someone had somehow invented something that literally cured society of all of life's ills and inconveniences, ended all war and lifted our standards of living to that of an immortal, healthy, beautiful, intelligent, wealthy, always happy state -- perhaps even allowing us to achieve a kind of godhood -- the great unwashed masses could probably be manipulated to not only be against it, but hate it, and ultimately support prohibiting it through institutional violence. It's a cleverly illustrated extreme example, but Firth asks you to step outside of the zeitgeist of constant infotainment and propaganda overload, reflect, and for christ's sake... think for your fucking goddamned self. Challenge the status quo, even with an amazing, humanity-saving concept, or better yet -- even something as simple and powerful as truth, and be destroyed by the machinations of those in power with something to lose. Further, prepare to have the rest of society join in on it, because how dare you. Sounds about right.
You'll find that Firth critiques some of the worst offenders, here:
Mainstream media pundits, talking heads, shills, surrogates, sophists, and other propagandists who try to 'get ahead of the narrative' to manufacture public opinion with outright lies and other forms of general deceit and intellectual dishonesty
'Useful idiots' who lose themselves in the manufactured group-think and lose their ability to think critically
The State
I could go on in greater detail, but Mr. Firth communicates everything much better with the story of his super miracle cream than I could with more words.
Watch it, below...
On being an outsider very effectively speaking truth to power, or just all-around upsetting the status quo in an extreme way -- watch for the character assassination campaigns and the mass-manipulation that could be taking place. CREAM creator, Dr. Jack Bellifer, could just as easily be someone like Julian Assange of Wikileaks. Or Edward Snowden.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” - Joseph Goebbels, German politician and 'Reich Minister of Propaganda' of Nazi Germany
Or, dare I say it, as someone with mixed feelings about him -- Donald Trump. Trump is regularly, and often enough rightfully, called out for stating untruths of various degrees, but here's the thing some are saying about 'ole Donald, that I think gets it right. For better or for worse, one shouldn't take everything he says literally, but one should take it seriously. Politicians use the truth to tell lies, while artists use lies to tell the truth, and Donald Trump is not a politician. Trump is the anti-politician, a kind of social artist, and part of this is what has sent everyone into a tizzy in seeing the upset of all of our political norms and expectations. While Donald Trump may not be the president we wanted, he could very well be the president we needed -- a protest vote that could finally, actually, somehow win against the vast and deep political machines of both parties.
And, as we can see, the character assassination campaign is certainly out in full, unadulterated, unapologetic force, to an extent we've never seen before, with complete disregard for the collateral damage, and by so many with the greatest ideological, economic, and political assets at stake.
The "right" to vote? What is that, exactly? Does this mean that I can insinuate my voting right into any other person's life? If this person refuses to listen to me, can I sue for damages? How is this right violated? How is it maintained? How is it asserted?
Oh, I can only use it in terms of elections organized by the state? Can I use my voting right to help pass legislation? No? I have to be an elected official first? I thought you said this was a right? Why would I need the state to define when and how I could use it? If the state determines when and how I use it, is it really a "right"?
Can I use it in any election? No? I have to be registered first? It needs to be on the ballot in my voting district? If I have been incarcerated, does the state guarantee that I am available and able to vote in my district's elections? No? So, it has been revoked? Can I vote down martial law if it is imposed? No? Revoked again, I assume.
I'm sorry, but this sounds less like a "right" and more like a state-granted entitlement and an extremely weak, tightly controlled power to influence the state and impose its will on others, assuming those in office magnanimously grant it.
How has this ruse not been seen for what it is, sooner? The vote is not "majority rule," it is not "Two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner," it is hardly even political power, in any meaningful sense of the word. It is a fragment of a bone, offered as a bribe to the population at large, to convince them not to revolt, or to interfere with the day-to-day operation of the State. It is a cheap pacifier for the all-but-powerless.
Lurking around on Twitter, today, naturally sucked me into yet another black hole of a host of 140-character 'exchanges'. Not having initially realized that a lot of the chatter was due to the new Netflix production, pretentiously named 'Bill Nye Saves the World', I'd expressed my increasing disdain for Bill Nye. Some rando had the nerve to honestly try to compare him to a modern-day Carl Sagan. How anyone could even remotely consider such a comparison is a stretch beyond belief.
Carl Sagan has rightfully earned his place in the pantheon of science popularizers. His long list of qualifications and experience working in academia, deep engagement with NASA, SETI, and the scientific community in general and receiving numerous scientific awards, having written multiple acclaimed science fiction books (one of which, 'Contact', was turned into a great movie), and creating the widely popular and effective show, 'Cosmos', leave no question as to his contributions. Further, he's long posthumously solidified his place simply based on how many prominent figures in science he's inspired.
... And then you have someone like Bill Nye. A lot of us fondly recall him as 'Bill Nye the Science Guy' on PBS from our childhood, who made scientific experiments look fun and interesting. I remember looking forward to watching his show wheeled in on a big CRT television, played from a VHS tape with poor tracking during science class in elementary school, and tuning in while staying at my grandparents' house. How fleeting such sweet nostalgia can be as you witness Bill Nye continue his fall from grace, but even I was not prepared for the shameful train wreck I was about to witness.
I'd already come to my own conclusion that his scientific mind and approach to things didn't seem to have aged well. Relying purely on nostalgic celebrity from (fellow) millenials as some kind of implied claim to scientific authority should almost be sufficiently disqualifying, but Bill Nye seems utterly relentless about whittling away at any perception of authority he has left. When live and in the hot seat and not following a script, his either remarkably obtuse or remarkably dishonest attempts to debate scientific issues he portrays himself as an authority on show a greater degree of intellectual vacancy than I would have thought. Unfortunately, what little respect I'd had left for him had been mostly drained, flowing from nostalgically positive, to now negative territory, especially after having finally seen a clip from his new show.
Seemingly, the SJWs have hollowed out and infected this man's mind, turning him into a veritable husk of his former 'Science Guy' self. Do you think I'm being a little overdramatic? Well, then... Please brace yourself, for we have now reached Mount Everest, peak-levels of cringe...
Oh, my, how far the mighty have fallen.
Let us have a moment of silence for what little dignity remains for this man, once a titan in our young, hungry, curious minds. What was once someone teaching and showing us about objective, empirical science has now crossed over into a sideshow of bizarro-world, gender-fluid theory, as so artfully and tastefully displayed by 'Rachel Bloom', from 'Crazy Ex-girlfriend', whoever the fuck that is, anyways. Seeing ole Bill Nye dancing around so creepily to it all is just cheap icing on this cringe-cake I wouldn't serve even to my worst enemy.
So how could this have happened? Let us top said cringe-cake with some sour grapes, to boot. Of course, Bill Nye was never a real 'Science Guy', anyways. He actually just has a Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering and merely played a 'Science Guy' on TV, according to a script. Being intellectually vacant and willing to do anything for money and some sad vestige of fame is what has turned Bill Nye into the Kim Kardashian of science.
Now, if some think I'm cherry picking only one cringey piece from an otherwise great or even mediocre or even sub-par show, I'm really not. Out of the sake of pure, morbid curiosity, I invite you to flip on Netflix and actually put yourself through an episode or two of this. I've watched a bit and there's really only so much I could take. With that being said -- I really, truly do hope that Progressive SJWs continue pumping out trash like this. They've become a parody of themselves, and they're too delusional, tone-deaf, and stuck in their sad little echo chambers to realize it.
Oh, and don't forget -- almost half of the fun of watching any youtube video is reading the comments!
“I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas. Kennedy himself was 9/10ths the way around the clock or he wouldn't have accepted such an enervating and enfeebling job -- meaning President of the United States of America. How can I be concerned with the murder of one man when almost all men, plus females, are taken from cribs as babies and almost immediately thrown into the masher?”
― Charles Bukowski, Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993
Just a moment ago I prepared, once again, to masochistically tease myself too close to the event horizon of the super-massive black hole of the ideology of yet another pro-regressive on the internet. Why I continue to do this to myself -- I couldn't tell you. I'm apparently a glutton for mental anguish, punishment and frustration.
As it goes.
Anyhoo, this zealous ideologue spouted a quote from an article about how "[McDonald's] chief executive, Steve Easterbrook, brought home a whopping $7.91 million last year — a 368% raise over his 2014 salary of $1.69 million —while low-wage McDonald’s workers are striking around the country for a livable income." and naturally followed up with a predictably inane, "Sure, they obviously can't afford to pay people better." Of course, in the bizarro world of a pro-regressive ideologue where basic math and common sense don't apply, this means that McDonald's can afford to pay their line-level workers $15/hr. Obviously.
Of course, Steve Easterbrook didn't merely get some kind of merit pay-raise just for being a good chap. He actually got a massive promotion from 'Chief Brand Manager' to Chief Executive Officer -- an important tidbit of information the ideologue conveniently ignored that was found within his own citation. Additionally, this doesn't tell the whole story, as it turns out that the vast majority of that $7.91 million is in stock options -- which is usually how a CEO's pay is structured for large, publicly-traded corporations. It's done this way to tie the CEO's pay very closely with the performance of the company. His base rate in 2015 was actually $1.1 million, and he received an 18% pay raise in March, 2016 to $1.3 million. If the performance under McDonald's tanked by the end of 2015, quality dropped, customers stopped coming and employees lost their jobs as a result of said tanked performance -- then he would have made far less along with probably having to step down in abject shame.
McDonald's is a company that took in $25.41 billion dollars in revenue last year. CEO Steve Easterbrook has taken on one of the most important jobs in a modern economy. This means taking on the ultimate responsibility of managing a massive entity consisting of '1.9 million employees and around 68 million customers daily in 119 countries across 36,535 outlets'. His mere words, actions, and inactions could anywhere from destroy to sustain to improve the jobs of its employees and the customers who enjoy their food -- very much so including myself. And while I'm more of a Wendy's man, I'm actually a solid fan of their 'Number 6' Crispy Chicken Club sandwich meal (hold the mayo!), add bacon, add ranch dressing, with large fries, a large Diet Coke (gotta watch my girly figure), and always add in the 4-piece chicken McNuggets... but I digress, and no I'm not a paid shill. I'm just here, calling out the bullshit.
As noted, executive pay is often tied directly to stock performance in large, publicly traded companies -- so while pro-regressive ideologues will naturally point out the increased income CEOs get, you'll never find them point out a CEO's massive drop in income for when their company doesn't perform. It's the same old story with 'speculators'. Pro-regressives absolutely love -- love, love -- to pounce on faceless 'speculators' when prices go up. But of course, you'll find them suspiciously, shamefully silent when speculators push prices down.
Now, on to the fast-food meat of the matter. Of the 1.9 million total employees, let's play super nice and give a very conservative estimate that only 1.5 million of them are primarily line-level employees making under $15/hr, whereas the remaining 400,000 could be corporate employees and managers. McDonald's ended 2015 with $4.53 billion in net profits, so let's say we were to try to make pro-regressive ideologues happy (it's impossible, btw, there's always something they feel entitled to) and eliminate all profits and turn it directly into a raise for all line-level employees -- since this is the 'extra fat' or 'surplus value' that the company has nefariously, unjustly 'stolen' from them and 'should not have' and 'should go back to the workers'. Since line-level McDonald's workers typically make anywhere from $8/hr to $10/hr, let's say they make $9/hr. Now, let's take the $4.53 billion in oppressive profits, cut it up intointo 1.5 million cute, little, socially-just slices, and hand them right out so very equitably (!) to all of the line level employees.
So what have we effectively accomplished by wiping out the profits of one of the largest companies in the world and handed it over to the 1.5 million line-level employees? What we've done is signed its death warrant.
Here's the simple math. $4.53 billion into 1.5 million employees means that we've only given these people an additional $3,020 into their gross (that means pre-tax for you entitled folk) yearly earnings. Since the pro-regressive argument goes that it 'should be' a 'livable wage' (we'll get to the consequences of a raise to $15/hr soon enough, trust me) -- they should consider this their full-time job to live decently off of. Full-time means 40 hours per week for 52 weeks, which brings us to a massive raise of -- drum-roll, please...
... an additional $1.45/hr, bringing their new wage to $10.45/hr! Social justice secured!
Understand -- when a company makes profits, those profits don't suddenly all go into the pockets of executives. Most of that money is either,
a) tucked away into savings for a rainy day of bad performance so they can still pay their bills and continue employing 1.9 million people,
b) to expand the scope of their operations by opening more locations to bring more jobs to more workers and more food to more consumers at low prices,
c) to invest in existing infrastructure to improve working conditions and/or quality of the food and/or the experience for the customer,
d) pay out into shareholders of various ages and classes (oftentimes including the employees themselves if they opt for 401k plans, IRA accounts for retirees, et al), or
e) some combination of these.
In the end, these profits are needed to sustain and/or expand the company -- not for some nefarious, oppressive, exploitative purpose, whatever pro-regressives dogmatically believe is considered so by attaining profits.
So what does this all ultimately mean? What about the demand for a so-called 'livable wage' of $15/hr if wiping out their current profits only means achieving an average wage of $10.45/hr?
If, let's say, McDonald's ever caved into these destructive, economically ignorant demands (hint: they won't) and gave these employees a raise from $9/hr to $15/hr -- for a conservatively estimated 1.5 million 'line level' employees, they would need to absorb $18.72 BILLION in additional costs. We're talking a necessary revenue increase of 73.7% -- revenues they've never achieved and likely won't for many, many years into the future where other costs will continue to grow as well. If they had to suddenly absorb these costs, without a change to their prices, and with last years' performance, they would be operating at a yearly loss of OVER $14 BILLION. Not only does that mean that they would not be able to expand and add more locations and thus hire more employees around the world, but they would absolutely go out of business. To shore up revenues an additional $18.72 billion to both maintain $15/hr line-level workers as well as achieve $4.53 billion in profit to continue business as usual, they would have to raise prices significantly and somehow manage, with said prices, in the face of serious competition,to achieve the same amount of demand for their food. No one in their right mind would put up with the massive price hikes necessary to generate $18.72 billion in additional revenue for their existing setup, and I'm even less convinced that $15/hr 'just because' workers are suddenly 67% more productive than their $9/hr former selves (which still assumes their locations would get the requisite over 67% uptick in demand).
That's bad for everyone, all around. That means 1.9 million people out of work, and a more concentrated market share into the remaining big fast food companies. It also means less competition for both customers and employees, which translates into higher prices for customers and less negotiating power for employees at the remaining fast food companies. Less leverage for employees and less leverage for customers means everyone loses, everywhere.
Oh, and I'm not even done, yet. Believe it or not -- you thought $18.72 billion in additional costs is rough? That was actually another super-nice, extraordinarily conservative estimate, as it doesn't include significant additional costs needed for each and every employee due to the higher rate. I'm talking about Workers Compensation, Unemployment Benefits, and Tax Liabilities -- all of which are a heavy burden placed upon businesses both large and small that are charged as rates according total wages earned, risk of injury or unemployment, and other factors. These additional expenses would effectively grow by about 67%, putting another nail into the coffin of the $15/hr minimum wage.
They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I don't think this analogy is entirely accurate with pro-regressives. The pro-regressive road to hell is paved with a hack-job, fly-by-night, scummy operation built on willful economic ignorance and dogmatic ideology -- and it uses the livelihood and dreams of the poor as the asphalt.
So, like, wow, man. Abraham Lincoln actually said this. I knew he had 'reverence for the law' (ugh), but really? 'Political religion'?
In a nutshell, to adopt the political religion and to sacrifice unceasingly upon the altar of the state? Shameless. Stalin would truly be proud.
"Let every American... swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others... let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor... Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap – let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; – let it be written in Primmers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; –And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.” - Abraham Lincoln
Of course, libertarians have been calling out statism as a form of religion for some time, now. There's tons of stuff around the internet by libertarians you'll find on this, but this one is my personal favorite:
"Libertarianism is "cultish," say the sophisticates. Of course, there's nothing cultish at all about allegiance to the state, with its flags, its songs, its mass murders, its little children saluting and paying homage to pictures of their dear leaders on the wall, etc." - Tom Woods
Sophisticates? Sophists, maybe, but I've got to give it to ole Tom Woods -- he's always been a treasure trove of righteous indignation and disdain for state fundamentalism. Regardless of calling out political religion for what it is and has been for decades, though, libertarians are usually mocked and laughed at for it. This phenomenon is not simply isolated to 'the right' or 'the left' (whatever either of these concepts even mean anymore, anyways) though. Both conservatives and pro-regressives are horribly guilty of worshiping the state as a kind of religion. And now we've got further explicit evidence from another one of 'Our Dear Leaders' that that's exactly what it is and exactly what it aims to be.
Oh, well, what's this? A wikipedia on 'Civil religion'? What's that, you ask?
"Civil religion is a concept that originated in French political thought and became a major topic for American sociologists since its use by Robert Bellah in the 1960s. It means the implicit religious values of a nation, as expressed through public rituals, symbols (such as the national flag) and ceremonies on sacred days and at sacred places (such as monuments, battlefields or national cemeteries). It stands outside the churches, although church officials and ceremonies are sometimes incorporated into the practice of civil religion"
Hrm. Let's dig a little deeper, shall we? Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his reverence for his 'social contract'? But, of course.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau coined the term in Chapter 8, Book 4 of The Social Contract (1762), to describe what he regarded as the moral and spiritual foundation essential for any modern society. For Rousseau, civil religion was intended simply as a form of social cement, helping to unify the state by providing it with sacred authority. In his book, Rousseau outlines the simple dogmas of the civil religion:
I'm so over Bernie Sanders and Progressives spreading lies and misinformation about their unrealizable ideals regarding socialismand so-called 'Democratic socialism'. First off, there actually aren't many countries governed by democratic socialist parties. The ones that are, such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras, Brazil, and Greece -- are complete and total social and economic shit-shows. There actually isn't much difference between plain ole Vanilla Socialism and so-called 'Democratic Socialism' -- they share the same exact ends while differing merely in the strategy on how to get there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism
"No, no, no... I'm not a Socialist. I'm a DEMOCRATIC Socialist!"
As it turns out, I'm not the only one -- it also looks like Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen of Denmark is sick and tired of these claims as well...
Danes apparently have grown weary of Sen. Bernie Sanders insulting their country.Denmark is not a socialist nation, says its prime minister. It has a “market economy.”
Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate who calls himself a socialist, has used Denmark as the example of the socialist utopia he wants to create in America. During the Democrats’ first debate last month, he said “we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.”
While appearing in New Hampshire in September, Sanders said that he had “talked to a guy from Denmark” who told him that in Denmark, “it is very hard to become very, very rich, but it’s pretty hard to be very, very poor.”
“And that makes a lot of sense to me.”
So because something makes sense to him, he has the right to force that system on people who don’t want it? Isn’t that what he’s saying?
But we digress. This is about Danes being offending by Sanders using the word “socialist” to describe their form of government. And who can blame them, especially when the free world has had enough of national socialists and Soviet socialists and North Korean socialists and Cuban socialists?
While speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the center-right Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he was aware “that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism.”
“Therefore,” he said, “I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”
Rasmussen acknowledged that “the Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security to its citizens,” but he also noted that it is “a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish.”
To that we’ll add that Sweden, another of Sanders’ inspirations, has for decades quietly moved away from its cradle-to-grave form of government welfare. And the Swedes are better off for having done so, just as the Danes will continue to be better off as their government overhauls its welfare state.
Source, here. You can also see the full youtube video in reference of the Danish PM,here. In addition to this, if Sanders, his supporters and Progressives in general would like to move towards an economy more like 'the Nordic Model', then they should also be prepared to accept some, what they would consider, 'radical free market concepts' such as absolutely no government-mandated minimum wage, a far lower corporate tax rate than than the US, a majority of privatized roads like in Sweden, lower taxes on the wealthy, higher taxes on the poor, radically higher taxes on the middle class, and far, far fewer economic regulations in general. Of course, because Sanders and his supporters are more socialist than they'd care to admit, the vast majority of them would probably never be willing to accept such relatively low economic regulation and 'radical' free market concepts. These are a major piece of the puzzle as to why these countries can prop up such a system in the first place. Another possible explanation of this behavior by Progressives and socialists is that many of them know all this, and that it's actually desirable and beneficial for them to have real, 'state ownership of the means of production' style socialism (which includes democratic socialism) be conflated and muddied up regularly with welfare statism (which isn't technically socialism). In this regard, it could be simply a matter of dishonest marketing through disinformation -- the ideological equivalent of a bait-and-switch tactic.
Ah, yes. The ole Anthropogenic Global Warming (hereon referred to as 'AGW') 'debate', if one could honestly call it that. I apologize in advance for sullying your computer screen with another such screed, but the AGW hype-train, fueled by fear and alarmism, just keeps on keepin' on, and there are some particularly glaring, nosebleed-inducing dents in said train for me to ignore much longer.
As for instructions on how to properly handle watermelons, well, I'll get to that part, later. Don't worry, it'll all be worth it.
CO2, the Innocent Whipping Boy
First, let's look at the real meat of the numbers, here. AGW and CO2 alarmists constantly refer to the current CO2 level in the atmosphere as being at a 'potentially catastrophic' 400 ppm (parts per million). However, a lot of people touting this number either ignorantly or dishonestly don't seem too interested in communicating what this really means. They just regurgitate how it's increased from about 270 ppm since 1850 to 400 ppm, today, correlated with the rise of industrialization. That's true, but the issue is this -- 400 ppm of the atmosphere is only 0.04% of the atmosphere. 400 ppm minus the 270 ppm means an increase of 130 ppm since 1850. That's an increase of only 0.013% in the atmosphere in 164 years of increasing industrialization. 0.013% is not a significant ratio of increase relative to the whole of the atmosphere, and certainly not a significant ratio relative to other times in the history of the earth. No one can deny this, as it's based on their very own oft-touted numbers. No one. This is just the simple math.
Of course, I can see it, already. Dishonest alarmists will then want to talk about how an increase of 270 ppm to 400 ppm "is an increase of over 48%", and while, yes, mathematically that's also true -- this interpretation of the numbers is not at all helpful. The statement 'an increase of over 48%' conveys far less information than the method provided earlier, and conclusions based on less information versus more are far less valuable, particularly when you're trying to draw conclusions from them. With the previous method, you're given far more context -- you're provided information about the piece as it relates to the whole. With the 'Dishonest Alarmist Method', it's just numbers in a vacuum -- almost meaningless. Of course, unless you're engaging in unadulterated propaganda as opposed to the actual science -- then such an interpretation of the numbers is exactly what you'd want. Take note that these are the kinds of games that are very often played with statistics for a whole range of issues. With statistical interpretation, it's easy to tell lies by using the facts -- and those seeking to validate their preconceived notions will jump all over it and propagate it until they're blue in the face.
Further, it's important to emphasize that this CO2 increase of 130 ppm is, again, correlated with the rise of industrialization since 1850. It's of course difficult -- virtually absurd, even -- to claim that none of this increase is due to human CO2 contributions, but it is equally absurd to claim that none of this increase is due to some combination of natural factors, as well. The conclusion we can draw, however, is that we cannot lay 100% of the 130 ppm increase of CO2 at the feet of human activity, as we know that CO2 levels have risen long before the existence of humanity, and they will rise, at times, long after we're gone.
As for the fact of the increase, it is more than likely that the earth's ecosystem will adapt and that life, including human life, will continue to survive, if not flourish, as life always has and does amidst these kinds of CO2 levels. This extra CO2 means an abundance of plant (including algae) food, leading to more plant-life, which leads to an eventual balance where the even greater amount of plants 'eat' the excess CO2, with the natural 'breathing' of the earth stabilizing. This has panned out exactly as expected, according to NASA, with the recently rising CO2 levels leading to what they refer to as a 'greening' of the earth:
From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25.
An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved using satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or amount of leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States.
...
Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect, said co-author Ranga Myneni, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University. “The second most important driver is nitrogen, at 9 percent. So we see what an outsized role CO2 plays in this process.”
Further, and this point is particularly important with respect to the natural 'breathing' of the earth,
The extent of the greening over the past 35 years “has the ability to fundamentally change the cycling of water and carbon in the climate system,” said lead author Zaichun Zhu, a researcher from Peking University, China, who did the first half of this study with Myneni as a visiting scholar at Boston University.
Greener areas show a 'leaf area' gain aka 'greening', whereas redder indicates loss.
To further capitalize on this point, much higher CO2 concentration levels of 2200 ppm preceded the rise of the Devonian Period about 400 million years ago, and vast forests covered large portions of the earth. Trees began competing with eachother over the 550% higher CO2 concentrations, to the point of eventually dying on top of eachother until they were 100 meters or more in depth. Want to know where all of our coal deposits we've been finding have come from? You guessed it -- those vast forests of dead trees consumed all of that 'catastrophic' CO2 that we're burning today. And even with a CO2 concentration of 2200 ppm, temperatures were only 6 degrees celsius higher than they are today.
In the end, it is all very silly to say that an increased CO2 level of 0.013% is 'catastrophic' -- especially considering our ecosystemic adaptability and the history of CO2 levels and the life that flourished under it.
Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc
Yes, temperatures have risen. Yes, CO2 has risen. No one denies this. However, linking temperature increase to CO2 increase solely because of the amount humanity is adding in to it since industrialization is a pure post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. There are many more factors at play with respect to temperatures and climate, and only acknowledging temperature changes for the last 150 years since industrialization, even just in relation to the past couple hundred thousand years of human existence (let alone hundreds of millions of years of climate history), is a pretty piss-poor sample size. Whether we're looking at the climate over the past year, past 150 years, past 20,000 years, past 400,000 years, or past 400 million years, not only does the climate change, but it's always changing, across virtually all timescales. There are cycles, within cycles, within cycles, within cycles. Even a cursory glance at temperature data derived from ice cores (below), shows how silly and nonsensical the whole idea of AGW is, as one can clearly see that the vast majority of human history has seen climate to be multiple degrees warmer than it is, today. To the extent there's been any climate change, we've actually been cooling for the past 1,000 years or so.
Ice cores clearly show that the vast majority of human history has been warmer than it is, today. To the extent there's been any climate change, we've been cooling for the past 1,000 years.
In addition to this, evidence shows that temperature fluctuation for Earth is very cyclical, switching between very warm periods and very cool periods every 100,000 years or so. We're actually currently in an interglacial period called the Holocene, and these interglacial periods are very tightly correlated with insolation (incoming solar radiation), leading to this being a major factor in earth's climate cycle. Clearly such a tight correlation over hundreds of thousands of years is far from coincidence, so either the earth is having a significant affect on the cyclical climate of the sun, or the sun is having a significant affect on the cyclical climate of the earth. Needless to say, it shouldn't be difficult to realize that one of these two possibilities is prima facie absurd.
Data clearly shows extremely tight correlation between earth's climate (temps), CO2 concentration, and insolation (incoming solar radiation)
Further -- and this is very important to note -- CO2 increases come after the temperature increases (on average about 800 years after), not before -- further putting into question the claim that 'CO2 increases are what cause higher temperatures'. They may contribute, but it doesn't seem that they're the cause. This doesn't necessarily prove that CO2 doesn't cause temperatures to rise, or that they aren't a factor in causing them to rise, otherwise we'd be engaging in the same correlation fallacy AGW proponents do, but it does show that this data is not valid evidence to their argument.
Speaking of planetary ecosystems, climates, temperature, greenhouse gases and life, let's bring our attention, for a moment, to Venus. Fear mongering alarmists, especially in the pop-science celebrities sphere, love to talk about and use Venus comparisons a lot. Man, they love to use them. But Venus has no vegetation. It doesn't have vast oceans of H20 and other complex ecosystems with fauna and flora and dirt that cyclically absorb and breathe out CO2, as we noted earlier. On Venus, it just gets trapped under an atmospheric blanket, under the brutal power of the sun and doesn't go anywhere. The Earth is not even remotely comparable to Venus, and there's no good reason to believe we will become Venus.
AGW is Political Religion, Not Science
So around and around we go, with AGW alarmists and other useful idiots claiming they are 'doing science', running around exclaiming how much they supposedly 'fucking love science', but they clearly haven't a clue what science actually is and what it means to 'do science'. 'Doing science' involves utilizing the scientific method, which is testing to try to disprove a hypothesis (not trying to prove it, as many of these organizations and individuals are actually trying to do) by utilizing control groups vs experimental groups in controlled environments. This point is important, here -- controlled environments. I'd hardly call the earth's climate a 'controlled environment' and I'd hardly call using a sample size of a mere 150 years in the tens of thousands of years of relatively recent human existence, amidst the millions of years of earth's climate, a proper sample size to compare this against.
This brings us to another point of interest in this debate -- climate 'models'. These 'models' are procedurally generated speculations produced by computer programs and designed by flawed individuals with extremely limited information. They incorporate relatively few factors (there are vast numbers of factors in earth's climate and ecosystem, many of which we don't even know) into these algorithms while trying to produce results akin to historic trends up to the current climate reality 'and beyond'. Of course, as the real-world climate changes, the algorithms governing the models (which regularly produce future predictions inconsistent with reality) are 'adjusted' to reflect new and updated data in order to shoehorn them into fitting both the actual climate along with predicting trends that uphold the AGW narrative. Climate models are not particularly rigorous, they don't utilize the scientific method, and the process surrounding them is eerily similar to how religion is rationalized, ad-hoc, based on preconceived notions and dogma. Yet, instead of being called out as such, these ad-hoc climate 'models' and their future trend predictions are regularly cited by the usual suspects to fuel the fire of alarmism and fearmongering. This is all completely backwards and not how actual science and the scientific method works.
Then there are the pet projects and special interests involved. The IPCC is a political authority that, while it doesn't engage in direct funding itself, has many subsidiaries that do, and if your outfit doesn't provide evidence that justifies its own existence and support the special interests involved, your funding gets cut. The existence of the IPCC in the first place absolutely relies on AGW dogma -- without it, they would disappear. As such, this naturally creates distorted incentives that amount more to supporting political favor than to supporting actual science that constantly challenges itself to discover truth as opposed to re-affirming certain political narratives.
One such narrative we still, unfortunately, hear propagated to this day, from the 44th President of the United States on down to any rando reddit commenter, is the notion of the scientific consensus re-affirming AGW. The '97% of scientists agree' claim is a debunked myth, but it circulates, regardless.
Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.
One frequently cited source for the consensus is a 2004 opinion essay published in Science magazine by Naomi Oreskes, a science historian now at Harvard. She claimed to have examined abstracts of 928 articles published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and found that 75% supported the view that human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming over the previous 50 years while none directly dissented.
Ms. Oreskes's definition of consensus covered "man-made" but left out "dangerous"—and scores of articles by prominent scientists such as Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Sherwood Idso and Patrick Michaels, who question the consensus, were excluded. The methodology is also flawed. A study published earlier this year in Nature noted that abstracts of academic papers often contain claims that aren't substantiated in the papers.
Another widely cited source for the consensus view is a 2009 article in "Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union" by Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, a student at the University of Illinois, and her master's thesis adviser Peter Doran. It reported the results of a two-question online survey of selected scientists. Mr. Doran and Ms. Zimmerman claimed "97 percent of climate scientists agree" that global temperatures have risen and that humans are a significant contributing factor.
The survey's questions don't reveal much of interest. Most scientists who are skeptical of catastrophic global warming nevertheless would answer "yes" to both questions. The survey was silent on whether the human impact is large enough to constitute a problem. Nor did it include solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists or astronomers, who are the scientists most likely to be aware of natural causes of climate change.
The "97 percent" figure in the Zimmerman/Doran survey represents the views of only 79 respondents who listed climate science as an area of expertise and said they published more than half of their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate change. Seventy-nine scientists—of the 3,146 who responded to the survey—does not a consensus make.
In 2010, William R. Love Anderegg, then a student at Stanford University, used Google Scholar to identify the views of the most prolific writers on climate change. His findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Mr. Love Anderegg found that 97% to 98% of the 200 most prolific writers on climate change believe "anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for 'most' of the 'unequivocal' warming." There was no mention of how dangerous this climate change might be; and, of course, 200 researchers out of the thousands who have contributed to the climate science debate is not evidence of consensus.
In 2013, John Cook, an Australia-based blogger, and some of his friends reviewed abstracts of peer-reviewed papers published from 1991 to 2011. Mr. Cook reported that 97% of those who stated a position explicitly or implicitly suggest that human activity is responsible for some warming. His findings were published in Environmental Research Letters.
Mr. Cook's work was quickly debunked. In Science and Education in August 2013, for example, David R. Legates (a professor of geography at the University of Delaware and former director of its Center for Climatic Research) and three coauthors reviewed the same papers as did Mr. Cook and found "only 41 papers—0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percent—had been found to endorse" the claim that human activity is causing most of the current warming. Elsewhere, climate scientists including Craig Idso, Nicola Scafetta, Nir J. Shaviv and Nils-Axel Morner, whose research questions the alleged consensus, protested that Mr. Cook ignored or misrepresented their work.
Rigorous international surveys conducted by German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch—most recently published in Environmental Science & Policy in 2010—have found that most climate scientists disagree with the consensus on key issues such as the reliability of climate data and computer models. They do not believe that climate processes such as cloud formation and precipitation are sufficiently understood to predict future climate change.
Surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose the alleged consensus. Only 39.5% of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members who responded to a survey in 2012 said man-made global warming is dangerous.
Finally, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—which claims to speak for more than 2,500 scientists—is probably the most frequently cited source for the consensus. Its latest report claims that "human interference with the climate system is occurring, and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems." Yet relatively few have either written on or reviewed research having to do with the key question: How much of the temperature increase and other climate changes observed in the 20th century was caused by man-made greenhouse-gas emissions? The IPCC lists only 41 authors and editors of the relevant chapter of the Fifth Assessment Report addressing "anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing."
Of the various petitions on global warming circulated for signatures by scientists, the one by the Petition Project, a group of physicists and physical chemists based in La Jolla, Calif., has by far the most signatures—more than 31,000 (more than 9,000 with a Ph.D.). It was most recently published in 2009, and most signers were added or reaffirmed since 2007. The petition states that "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of . . . carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."
The fearmongering and alarmism continues in the face of all of the conflicting scientific evidence. Global climate change is happening, yes -- it's been cyclically happening for millions of years, and there is far too much evidence that suggests, contrary to AGW dogma, that humans have virtually to absolutely nothing to do with it. Ultimately, Anthropogenic Global Warming is an excuse towards an ideological agenda -- to regulate, tax and redistribute as much as possible, and to curtail capitalism and individual liberty, in favor of centralization and collectivism.
A Gallagherian Conclusion
For this reason, I've long referred to AGW activists and environmentalists as 'watermelons' -- 'green' on the outside, but ultimately deeply 'red' on the inside. These are utilitarian ideologues, and utilitarians are well-known for their affinity towards what's known as The Noble Lie, if that's what it takes to advance their narrative and political agenda. The ends justify the means, and eviscerating the truth and individual liberty is a small price to pay towards achieving what is, in their perception, the aim of some 'greater good'.
To be clear, I am not implicating all AGW scientists -- though there are certainly some distorted incentives and politics taking place, that much is clear. The political and ideological activism I am concerned about poisoning this issue are in the mainstream media, bureaucrats and representatives within the State, special interests, influencers on social media, and amongst the rank-and-file. It's in this domain where they are spinning or even outright fabricating claims, some of which pro-AGW authorities don't even claim, themselves, to push an ideological agenda and send it viral.
"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself." -- Joseph Goebbels
The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success." -- Adolf Hitler
Anthropogenic Global Warming is, simply put, just another of the latest in a long line of compounding Noble Lies employed in the service of an ideology which cannot stand on its merits, alone, and it should be publicly recognized as such. So let's finally peel the green skin off of this watermelon, for good, expose the mushy, rotten, red flesh that's beneath, and smash it to bits once and for all.
And with that, I leave you with your moment of zen...
This post was originally published under my old pseudonym, 'Sentient Void', at the Ron Paul Forums Blog, on 10/15/2015. It has been edited and updated with more sources and other information and for 'A Sisyphean Revolt'.
